


The Naming of Larry Daley

by pan_ismyhomeboy



Series: Ancient Egyptian Poetry and Other Marvels of Antiquity [2]
Category: Night at the Museum (2006 2009)
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, More ancient Egyptian nerdery, Snogging, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3634242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pan_ismyhomeboy/pseuds/pan_ismyhomeboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The continuing courtship of our favorite night guard and undead pharaoh. Featuring calligraphy sets, hieroglyphics, heavy makeouts, 1980s movie marathons, and the funny ways we tell people we love them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Naming of Larry Daley

**Author's Note:**

> I am not an Egyptologist, I just play an amateur one on the internet. Liberties taken with ancient Egyptian culture and Ahk's own familiarity with the outside world, mostly based on what I think is funny or cool.
> 
> Easter egg hunt: find the Neil Gaiman and Brobdingnagian Bards quotes and get 100 fake points redeemable at your nearest Nuka-Cola machine!

“I have something for you,” Larry says one night during a lull in the usual chaos of the museum. He pulls out a gift-wrapped present and offers it to the man at his side.

“A gift?” Ahkmenrah asks as he takes the small box. “Is there a modern observance today? It isn’t — oh what is that delightfully pagan festival with the trees and the flying antelope?”

“You mean reindeer?”

“No, it’s usually snowing when they gain their powers of flight.”

“I never can tell if you’re just yanking my chain,” Larry says with a shake of his head, smiling despite himself. “And no, Christmas isn’t until the end of December. This is just, uh, just because.”

“Just because,” Ahkmenrah repeats, fingers playing over the gold ribbon. “I have nothing for you in return.”

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Larry says, suddenly shy as he watches the pharaoh unwrap the present.

“Is it customary these days for only one partner to dote upon another?” Ahkmenrah sets aside the ribbon and wrapping paper carefully, fingers working off the top of the box.

“Of course not, and I’m not _doting_ , I’m—” But to be honest he still stumbles when Ahkmenrah calls him things like _partner_ or _beloved_ and the pharaoh only gives that infuriatingly knowing smile to show that he noticed.

Inside the box is a bottle of black ink, a large wooden handle, and an assortment of metal nibs. “What is this?”

“It’s, well, it’s a calligraphy set. I figured it would be easier for you to write in hieroglyphics or whatever with real tools instead of just crappy ballpoint pens. And if I’m going to keep practicing, I might as well learn the way you did. Sort of. I wasn’t actually sure where to find an authentic ancient Egyptian writing utensil on short notice.” Only at the end of all that does Larry remember to take a breath, though the look on Ahk’s face almost takes it away again.

“Thank you, Larry,” he says softly, smile blossoming into a full-fledged grin. “It’s lovely. When can we begin?”

The night guard looks around for a moment, partially to make sure the museum is still calm and partially to get his composure back. Ahkmenrah’s obvious joy at the gift is seriously not helping Larry’s complexion at the moment. “Well there’s no time like the present, so… how about now?”

…

Okay, so calligraphy is a little harder than Larry thought. Or Larry’s just a little less good at this fancy writing thing than he’d hoped. He and Ahkmenrah have been writing with the set nearly every night and while the pharaoh takes to it happily enough, Larry’s practice keeps getting interrupted. The first night had been the incident in the miniature room with Dexter running off with the Mayan leader and thereby prompting all the _other_ Mayans to declare war — teeny, obnoxious war — on the rest of the museum. The second night the cavemen had resolved themselves to the rediscovery of fire _and_ to testing the building’s smoke alarms. On the third night… the two of them may have gotten distracted and spent more time with their hands on each other than on the calligraphy set. Not that Larry had put up more than a token resistance to that development; when a pharaoh gets that come hither look and tells you to come, you — _well_.

“I’m never going to get this,” he declares a week in, looking between his paper (chicken scratch) and Ahkmenrah’s (literal artistic perfection and grace).

“I remember you saying the same about night guarding,” Ahkmenrah says without looking up. “Multiple times, in fact. Are you holding your pen at the correct angle?”

“That’s not nearly the same thing and yes, I am _holding my pen_ at the correct—”

Ahkmenrah reaches over, adjusts Larry’s grip on the instrument, and watches the ink flow smoothly instead of in a blotchy mess.

“I rather think they are similar, in the end. Both require patience and a willingness to learn from mistakes.”

Larry glares at the pen which he swears only works because Ahkmenrah is watching. “That sounds like a roundabout way of calling me hard headed.”

“You can be stubborn when you so choose.” There’s a kiss at Larry’s neck. “Like right now, convinced that because you’ve been using sticks of graphite your whole life you’ll never learn another way to write. You can’t treat a brush — or pen, as the case may be — with stubbornness. You need to move like water.”

Larry sighs and leans into the nuzzle just above his shirt collar. “Wax on, wax off, eh Mr. Miyagi?” At Ahkmenrah’s puzzled silence he sighs again. “God, you and Nick both. _The Karate Kid_ , 1984. It’s a classic and it’s going on your required pop culture viewing list.”

“I will never come to understand you,” Ahkmenrah says with a laugh.

“That's because you haven’t seen _The Karate Kid_ , you uncultured schmuck!”

Which is how the museum ends up with a 1980s movie marathon on Larry’s next custody night. Larry may be more enthusiastic with this development than anyone else — except maybe Jedidiah and Octavius, who argue enthusiastically over whether Ferris Bueller or Danny LaRusso is a better protagonist — but between having Nick there and holding his dead pharaoh boyfriend’s hand as they watch movies, Larry’s pretty sure this is the best life could ever get.

… 

For a while Larry forgets about hieroglyphics and just practices calligraphy in English. Even though he’s still convinced all his work is shitty, he has to admit it looks a lot cooler than using a regular pen. He finishes writing Nick’s full name and date of birth, blows on the ink to make it dry, and holds up the paper for his son and Ahkmenrah to see. “Not too shabby, huh?”

Nick looks skeptically up from his DS. “I can make that on the computer.”

“Don’t you give me that when we put up _every_ coloring page and macaroni collage _you_ brought home from kindergarten. Those weren’t exactly Rembrandts either.”

“Comparing yourself to a kindergartener, Dad. Really not helping your case.”

“Go back to your Gamestation 360.”

The look on Nick’s face is one of eternal suffering. “Dad, there is literally _no such thing_ as what you just said.”

“Oh good, then your mom and I can return that birthday present we’ve been hiding from you. I mean, if there’s no such thing as your favorite video game stuff then there’s no sense in—”

“Ughhhh never _mind_.” Nick gives his dad a withering look before sliding off the desk. “I’m going to go explore. Come find me when you’re cool again.”

“He’s going to make a great teenager,” Larry mutters as he watches Nick leave. “Ahk, tell me _you_ appreciate that I spent ten minutes writing my son’s name on a piece of computer paper.”

“You’re learning,” the pharaoh says with approval. “You only scratched through the page twice this time.”

Larry sighs and sets the paper down, passing the calligraphy pen back to Ahkmenrah. “Well, progress is progress I guess.”

“Here. Put your hand over mine and I’ll show you again how I write my name.”

Kings, as it turn out, have very, _very_ long names, at least if you’re being formal about it. Ahkmenrah’s hand is warm and steady beneath Larry’s, never once faltering. There _is_ something about it like water as the ink flows from their shared grip and transforms into symbols, some of which Larry’s even beginning to recognize.

“...and we close up the cartouche like so and _voilà_ , as the Gauls are so fond of saying these days.”

“What?”

The pharaoh looks up inquisitively. “Were you not listening?”

It’s only then Larry realizes there was commentary the entire time and that his mind had wandered badly after touching Ahkmenrah’s hand. “I — yes, I was listening, what sort of question is — Gaul and cartouches, see?”

But when those warm, steady fingers set down the pen and curl around Larry’s hand, the night guard further forgets what was supposed to have his attention.

“Your focus leaves much to be desired,” Ahkmenrah says with an amused quirk of his lips.

“Hey, if you wanna talk about desire we could always—” Guilt flashes over Larry’s face and he looks quickly toward the empty space Nick had occupied before wandering off.

“I do believe he’s been gone for some time,” the pharaoh offers. “Although gods _forbid_ you do something for yourself for once, or that Nicholas find out his father is in a _carnal relationship_.”

“First off, ew, I want you to think about that carefully. Would _you_ have wanted to hear about your parents getting it on?”

“How else would I have known where children come from?” Ahkmenrah laughs at the expression on Larry’s face. “But I can see modern sensibilities are far more delicate.”

“It’s not that! I just haven’t, y’know, told him about me and you yet.”

“Larry, I’m fairly certain the entire _museum_ knows.”

“Yeah, but I mean sitting down and telling Nick, officially. Explaining what that means.”

“We held hands during your movies the other night,” Ahkmenrah says gently. “Was that not meant to display our courtship? What further explanation could there be?”

Larry grasps for words that aren’t there and wonders if this is just a dad thing, or a him thing, and maybe it won’t make sense to anybody else. “He’s been through a lot,” he finally says. “His parents split up and then his mom got engaged again and his dad is dating a three thousand year old museum exhibit. I’m worried he’ll just feel… abandoned.”

Ahkmenrah touches the back of the other man’s neck, thumb stroking gently at the nape of his hair. It’s immeasurably relaxing in a way Larry can’t quite explain. Probably because Ahkmenrah is the one that’s doing it. “Erica and Nick aren’t the only ones allowed to move on, Larry.”

“I know, I know, I just—”

“You worry.”

“All the time.”

“I can see that.” Ahkmenrah leans in to kiss his cheek. “Come to me later and I will find a distraction for your cares.”

…

Ahkmenrah is as good as his word. Larry has strict rules about the no sex thing on custody nights, but he never said a damn thing about being pushed up against a wall and snogged silly. Or maybe, you know, a little bit of groping. He’s only human after all and Ahkmenrah has a body to die for and sometimes Larry is just flabbergasted at what his middle aged self has to offer in return.

“You’re thinking too much again,” Ahkmenrah says against his ear. The pharaoh’s crown is already on the floor, carefully placed there rather than knocked off enthusiastically. (Larry doesn’t even want to _begin_ to imagine how to explain any dents to McPhee.) Other bits of clothing get discarded as well, though to Ahkmenrah’s great disappointment Larry insists everything from the waist down stays on.

“I am not,” Larry retorts, though the teeth exploring down the shell of his ear make it a little hard to concentrate. “You’re too pretty for your own good. I get distracted sometimes.” The lobe of his ear gets a sharp nip and Larry lets out an embarrassingly earnest sound.

Without his crown Ahkmenrah looks younger somehow, dark hair messy and thick between Larry’s fingers. It’s a luxury to press their foreheads together without the crown getting in the way and that gesture is almost more intimate than anything explicitly sexual.

Well. _Almost_ , Larry thinks as he catches the hands that start to pull at his belt. “Don’t you dare,” Larry breathes. “We’ve got ten minutes before final rounds and Dexter knows how to pick locks.”

“It strikes me there are several things we can do in ten minutes.” Ahkmenrah kisses up Larry’s throat, playfully tugging at the hands still in the other man’s grasp. “In my experience, sex under the pressure of time and the threat of discovery is _quite_ satisfying.”

“How do you stay so calm and collected when we do this?” Larry demands, but then there’s a knee between his legs and he can’t decide if he wants to be irritated or turned on or both. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Of course! Seeing you flustered is its own reward.”

Larry opens his mouth for a witty and devastating comeback, decides against it, and goes back to kissing Ahkmenrah as hard as he can.

… 

It used to be on the first shift or so after returning Nick to his mother, Larry would be in a foul mood and the museum’s inhabitants would respond accordingly. Now, the exhibits go out of their way — almost suspiciously so — to give Larry and Ahkmenrah time to themselves. The number of meaningful looks, nudges, and winks being tossed around in Larry's presence makes him want to vomit a little. It’s like dating someone in a fishbowl — a multistory, perpetually chaotic, and occasionally on fire fishbowl.

Still. Knowing that the Old West and the Roman Empire have banded together to keep the Mayans at bay, that Teddy is lecturing the cavemen on the inherent dangers of human ingenuity, and that Attila personally set his marauding band after Dexter to keep the capuchin away from the employee breakroom is… sweet. What is it Ahk had said? _You care for us and we, in turn, care for you._

“I keep meaning to get this placed cleared out,” Larry mutters as he fumbles for the light switch. The room is about as disorganized as it was the first time he met Cecil and company back here so many months ago. “There's a couch around here somewhere. I know it's not much...”

“It’s perfect,” Ahkmenrah says, but he’s not looking at the room.

…

It’s one of their shared nights together, tangled in a mess of limbs on a too-small couch — really, Larry needs to tell McPhee that a broken sofa is absolutely terrible for employee morale — when he asks Ahkmenrah about his name.

“Which one?” Ahkmenrah asks, reaching for the sketchpad they’d taken to keeping around the breakroom.

“Exactly. The whole thing’s a million characters long. It can’t take _all_ that to write three syllables.” Larry flips through the page and points to the hieroglyphics taking up an entire piece of paper.

“It doesn’t. These are pharaonic names I gained when I ascended the throne, titles that would be read out in court, for example.”

“His Royal Highness Ahkmenrah, son of whoever, ruler of everywhere the light touches?”

Ahkmenrah laughs. “Something like that. It must seem strange to someone used to only family and personal names.”

“So which one is what we call you now?”

Ahkmenrah points to a cartouche toward the bottom of the page. “There. Can you read it?”

Larry studies the writing for a few moments and squints. He recognizes some of the individual symbols but that’s about it. Still, never one to be deterred he gives it his best shot: “Bird, flat Lego block, baby with a rattle, Eye of Sauron?”

“Wh— where did you get _baby with a rattle_?”

“There,” Larry says, pointing. “See, it looks like a toddler in a carseat, and in his hand is a baby rattle, probably because he wouldn’t shut up and his parents were tired of hearing him yell.” He looks up and sees Ahkmenrah staring at him, aghast. “What?”

“That’s the hieroglyph for a deity.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life.”

“Well, then.”

“It does _not_ look like a _baby_ with a _rattle_.”

Larry looks back down at the page skeptically. “You sure about that?”

“Heretic.” Ahkmenrah thwacks him over the head — though lightly, without any real malice — with the sketchpad. “You’ve seen some of these before. I know for a fact you know at least one of these.”

Larry sighs and looks at it again. “The circle with the dot at the end, that’s the sun, right?”

“Yes. And paired with the deity glyph, that signifies…?”

“Ra?”

“Good! You _have_ been listening.”

Larry really shouldn’t feel utterly pleased at the praise, but he does anyway. “What about the other ones?”

“The bird here symbolizes the soul. Or a part of the soul, at any rate. This is the akh, the piece of us that becomes an ancestor after death if we led good lives.”

“So, what, the part of you that becomes a ghost when you die?”

“That’s not nearly as poetic but not… entirely wrong.” Ahkmenrah smiles a bit and shrugs. “It’s all a bit complicated and I’m sure you don’t really want a lecture on ancient Egyptian metaphysics.”

“Because learning about history is something I absolutely hate to do and has no bearing on my life whatsoever.” He loops his arms around Ahkmenrah and lays his head on the pharaoh’s shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere. I literally have all night.”

Ahkmenrah rests his head against Larry’s in return. “The akhu are the spirits of our beloved dead. Have you seen the painting of the night sky on the inner lid of my sarcophagus? Each of those stars is an akh, and it was expected that I would join them upon my death.”

“The great kings of the past look down on us from those stars,” Larry muses, and gets a blank look. “I can see your kid didn’t make you watch _The Lion King_ eight times in a row when he was little. Never mind, we’ll put it on your to-watch list. Dead guys and stars?”

“Dead guys and stars,” Ahkmenrah confirms. “The goddess Nut holds justified souls in her body and protects them from all harm, and in return they bless their descendents.”

“Justified?”

“Yes, it means judged worthy. Sort of. There’s not really a good translation.” He shifts, thinking for a moment. “When we die, our hearts are measured against the feather of truth. If we are good and righteous people, our hearts are lighter than the feather and we are considered justified. If not, then our hearts are devoured and we blink out of existence.”

Larry lets out a low whistle. “How many people make it past that?”

“Plenty,” Ahkmenrah says with a grin. “It’s a really heavy feather.”

Larry turns his head to look at the sketchpad again. “So the bird is the first syllable of your name. That middle rectangle’s ‘men,’ I’m guessing?”

“Exactly right. It means 'established.' So that spells Ahkmenrah, or something like ‘he who is established as the justified soul of Ra.’”

“That’s a pretty badass name. I think my parents just picked Lawrence because they liked the way it sounded.”

“It’s certainly not what I would have named you,” Ahkmenrah laughs. “Though I am rather attached to the name Larry at this point. It suits you.”

“You think so? I think it sounds kinda… eh." A underwhelmed shrug. "Boring.”

“Trust me, you’re the first Larry I’ve ever known and by far my favorite.”

“That’s not saying much if I’m the first you’ve ever known, is it?”

“Oh listen to you. You couldn’t take a compliment if your life depended on it.” Ahkmenrah gives a nuzzle and a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re my favorite of the whole museum.”

“Wait til I tell Jedidiah, he’ll be _heartbroken_.”

“I’m not dating Jedidiah, am I?”

“Oh God I hope not, the physics alone just boggles the mind." Ahkmenrah tries to swat him with the sketchpad again but Larry grabs it and holds it out of reach. “Say please.”

“Honestly I’d rather hear you say it,” the pharaoh says with a grin, leaning in to capture Larry’s bottom lip with his teeth.

“That’s, uh, wow,” Larry says several long moments later when Ahkmenrah finally lets him go.

“You’re impossible,” Ahkmenrah says fondly, eyes soft as he regards the other man. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Well, I’ve got a few ideas…”

…

Larry tries to keep things discreet, but the fact he walks with an absolute swagger every time he gets laid doesn't help. Ahkmenrah is doing him a world of good. He feels limber, attractive, _wanted_ , all things he hasn’t felt for a long, long time. He puts up good naturedly with the wolf whistles from some of the exhibits and ignores them for the most part. It’s only later he realizes there’s a veritable constellation of hickeys on his neck far above the collar of his shirt. The whistling goes down, just a bit, when he wears a turtleneck the next day.

The hickeys are just faded enough for him to consider ditching the Steve Jobs look when he finds the sketchpad back on his desk, opened to a page with fresh calligraphy. There’s a cartouche in hieroglyphics he’s never seen before along with an inscription in English: _For Larry Daley, who doesn’t think his birth name is special enough._

There’s no signature, but of course there doesn’t have to be.

“Bird, equal sign, and I literally have no idea what that is.” Larry sighs to himself and digs out one of his Egyptian dictionaries.

From the second floor balcony, Ahkmenrah watches and smiles.

…

Slowly Larry progresses from ‘infinitely shitty’ to ‘not too bad, he guesses’ with his calligraphy. Nick catches onto the hieroglyphs faster than he does, and more than once Larry catches his son and boyfriend exchanging notes he can’t even begin to decipher. Larry doesn’t think he’ll be speaking ancient Egyptian anytime soon but he feels close to Ahkmenrah no matter where he practices. He finds himself doodling hieroglyphs on the backs of business cards and receipts on the subway. Some of the symbols, like the sun, are easy: a circle and a dot and you call it a day. Some, like the dozens upon dozens of bird signs, are frustratingly complicated and similar. Like the bird at the beginning of Ahkmenrah’s cartouche and the one in front of Larry’s.

“Say it again?” Larry asks as he helps Ahkmenrah unwrap his bandages one night.

“Ra-Heruakhetymose.”

“Ra something in the middle mose.”

“Heruakhety,” Ahkmenrah repeats with a grin.

“Gesundheit,” Larry replies dutifully. “Three symbols for a million consonants seems like overkill.”

“You’d have a nickname. Mose, perhaps.”

“You can’t call the half-Jewish kid from Brooklyn ‘Mose’.”

Ahkmenrah’s brow furrows. “Whyever not?”

"I — never mind. I’m not explaining it this close to Pesach.” He helps Ahkmenrah out of the sarcophagus and tosses the bandages to the side. “Sleep well?”

“After a fashion.” Ahkmenrah is completely naked and Larry seems entranced with a pillar. “You’re allowed to look, you know.”

“Not if I want to get anything done tonight,” Larry says with a tinge of red in his cheeks. Ahkmenrah just laughs and begins getting dressed. “So,” the night guard says, “I get a Ra in my name like you?”

“Yes. Specifically Ra-Heruakhety, the Ra who acts as the Heru of the Two Horizons.”

“...you have more than one Ra?”

“It’s… complicated?” The pharaoh waves his hands dismissively. “Deities, you understand.”

“The two horizons thing at least explains the equal sign. What’s all that mean anyway?”

Here Ahkmenrah pauses, fingering the shawl of beads that usually sits about his shoulders. “Heruakhety is the god of the rising and setting sun. When we use that name for Ra we mean to talk about his eternal protection from dawn until dusk and back again. The, ah, guardian of the world as it travels through those times, if you will.”

Larry looks at Ahkmenrah and Ahkmenrah looks at his bare feet. There’s silence for a few moments.

“You’re a dork,” Larry finally says. “An absolutely inexcusably romantic dork and I love it. What’s the ‘mose’ part mean?”

“Son of,” Ahkmenrah says as he looks up at Larry with a small, pleased grin. “You really like it?”

“Uh, _yeah_ , it’s perfect and badass even if it is a mouthful.”

“I have another one for you.” The pharaoh wets his lips. “Meryahkmenrah. Beloved of—”

“Dork,” Larry repeats as he pulls Ahkmenrah close. Forehead to forehead, sharing breath for a moment before the crown goes on. “I love that one too.”

“And I you,” Ahkmenrah murmurs before their lips meet.

**Author's Note:**

> Research!
> 
> Because I'm a fucking huge nerd I [made a cartouche](http://i.imgur.com/YFyAkd7.jpg) for both Larry and Ahkmenrah with some annotations. Translations and transliterations are a bit wibbly wobbly. I had a lot of fun making Ahkmenrah's canon name fit with pharaonic names of the past. His is most likely a personal name, but I wrote it in the cartouche as a throne name (with the sedge + bee glyphs that represent a unified Upper and Lower Egypt). [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_royal_titulary) has an explanation of all the titles a pharaoh might have. Also, yes, I'm working on a cartouche for Kahmunrah as well.
> 
> Ra-Heruakhety (or Ra-Horakhty, if you were a Greek speaker) is a syncretic god made of up Ra, the Big Sun Dude, and Heruakhety, a specific form of Heru (Horus). You can read all about this deity [in this PDF](http://wepwawet.org/Epithets/RaHeruakhety.pdf). And [here](http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/gods/explore/ra_horak.html) is a pretty picture!
> 
> And just because I get the feeling everyone in this fandom would appreciate it, [here's a nice free how-to-hieroglyphics PDF](http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf_library/fischer_eg_calligraphy.pdf) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
> 
> [This](http://media.europeanpaper.com/photos/photos/brause-calligraphy-set-pbr195-1.jpg) is the calligraphy set Larry bought Ahk, because he's a fancy pants.


End file.
